Lovely busy family day today, Roots, the sea, more sea, fish and chips, games and chatter………
Low view of the sea
Category Archives: nature
Birds, A Return and Independence Day
We were waiting to collect some family as they arrived in Penzance on the Scillonian after a few days holiday when we noticed a little flock of pretty, orange-legged birds – Ruddy Turnstones according to Merlin. 
The Scillonian about to dock in Penzance
It’s Independence Day in Ukraine and we send love to our Ukrainian friends, here enjoying special ice-creams called Hedgehogs, at the Chapelporth Cafe in 2022. The angel at the top is one of mine made in the colours of the Ukrainian flag for Danylo..
Sculpture, Blue and A Pie
Our eldest daughter came today to help my lovely Mr S move our very heavy Finger Labyrinth sculpture a few feet. It has been tricky mowing around it so now it’s at the edge of a flower bed and a new lawn will be sown where it was. It looks much better where it is now.
My next job will be to find plants to grow at the base that won’t grow too high to obscure the carved words. I shall start researching an evergreen, low growing shrub that has flowers, maybe scent……
Ars brevis vita longa
Amor vincit omnia
Blue skies and a temperature of 21C – perfect!
Chicken, leek and bacon pie
Six on Saturday – Recovery
It rained! Actually it rained quite a lot and our very sad hydrangeas perked up. The flowers are still a little crisp but the leaves are mostly green again and not limp any more so we have hopes that they will recover properly. You can see them all looking much happier here. Sadly, several labels got lost some time ago.
Petiolaris
Black Steel Zebra
We bought a beautiful blue hydrangea recently and planted it out just before the heatwaves. It suffered and we thought we had lost it but I dug it up, popped it back in a pot and kept it watered and it is looking the healthiest of the lot. We’ll plant it again in a week or two..
Jim, over at Garden Ruminations, hosts Six on Saturday Pop over and in the comments, you’ll find so many delightful posts from keen gardeners all over the world.
Carrots, Berries and A Poem
Volunteer harvest on Tuesday was newly harvested carrots. We had some that evening, absolutely delicious and so much more carrotty than ones bought in shops! Today I have grated some to make an American Spiced Carrot Cake and frozen it away for next Tuesday at Roots.
The berries in the front garden are beautifully bright red.
I love this poem and I’m surprised I haven’t posted it before. It’s the philosophy behind my blog, how extraordinary ordinary things are. I hope you enjoy it too.
Another Feather, Metalwork and Flowers
We parked for Truro halfway up Chapel Hill this afternoon and walked into the city, a route I took many, many times as a youngster when we lived on the hill.
We passed a feather, caught in a hedge of Escallonia, spotted the name of our town, Redruth, on a short drain runway across the pavement and finally, the house we lived in, where there were flowers for sale with a piggy bank for the honesty payments. 
Rainfall, Harvest and Feather
There has been rain over the last two nights but only 3 mls recorded since last Tuesday at Community Roots. A farmer on the radio this morning said the 8 mls he’d recorded was, ‘”A Goldilocks amount, not too little and not too much!” We hope for a little more over the next few days but with family about to visit, not so much as to spoil their fun!
More tomatoes were harvested today.
Tanaka
Choc Cherry Tomatoes
The raindrops gathered on a feather caught my eye.
Overnight Rain
We have recorded no rain up at Community Roots since June 9th and it’s been the same here, just 10 minutes away but overnight there was some rain and everything looks just a bit brighter today. I went out early and caught some raindrops on plants and spider webs.
Nasturtium
Dill seed pods with raindrops taken through the window
Raindrops on a spider’s web
Flower Baskets, Nigella and A Tomato
The hanging baskets outside our favourite coffee shop in Redruth are looking really lovely.
I haven’t sown Love-in-a-mist this year (an oversight) but discovered a couple of self-sown ones in the stony path.
Our tomatoes in the greenhouse are ripening up nicely. This one caused some amusement.
Six on Saturday – Scent and A Book
My first thoughts for today’s six were our six drought damaged Hydrangeas but I need something more uplifting as maybe you do too. So today, it’s the few flowers we have left and their scent. Interestingly, the gardening charity RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey have had such problems with their hydrangea collection this summer that they are thinking of moving them North to its gardens in Greater Manchester and North Yorkshire, to allow them to thrive away from drought and heat.
The beautiful rose we were give for our Golden Wedding 9 years ago flowered earlier in the year and is now having a second go. Its scent is proper old fashioned rose, the sort that as kids we used to try to make into perfume!
Crown Princess Margareta, a fragrant English Rose
We are keeping our Sweet Peas watered with grey water and watering cans and they are giving us colour and scent which is delightful. We get our Sweet Peas from Sarah Raven as plug plants each year, rather extravagant but such lovely varieties.
Sweet Pea – Dark Velvet
Sweet Pea – Prince of Orange
From The Clouds of Scent Sweet Pea Collection
Sweet Pea – Lady Collier
Those Sweet Peas fill us with perfume all day and when the sun goes down, we have Night Scented Stock, which daughter no 2, a bad sleeper, used to call ‘Night flowers,’ as we took her for a garden walk to settle her back into sleep. Some may think they look a bit scruffy and inconsequential in the daytime but their scent at night more than makes up for that.
The herbs fill the air with their particular, foody smells but maybe they are for next week.
I’d like to recommend a beautiful little book, “Led By The Nose’ by Jenny Joseph, its subtitle ‘A Garden of Smells.’ You may know her name from her wonderful poem, “Warning” which you can read here if you’d like to. This delightful book follows her garden month by month, not by colour or what she can see in her garden but the smells that lead her and the reader around by the nose.
Jim, over at Garden Ruminations, hosts Six on Saturday Pop over and in the comments, you’ll find so many delightful posts from keen gardeners all over the world.
